A Melbourne couple recorded themselves plotting to lure a man to their car in broad daylight before he was fatally shot in the back, a court has been told.
Duc Nguyen, 44, and his then-girlfriend Stacey Curham, 23, appeared in the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday for a pre-sentence hearing after Nguyen was found guilty of murder and Curham pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Crown prosecutor Kristie Churchill told the court the pair had arranged to meet Brian Laidlaw, 55, outside a Fitzroy public housing building on July 12, 2022.
Mr Laidlaw believed Curham wanted to buy drugs for a friend, but the pair were instead motivated, in part, by a desire to exact revenge for a grievance Curham held, Ms Churchill said.
“You’re about to f–king shoot someone,” Curham was recorded saying minutes before the confrontation.
Ms Churchill said police uncovered eight voice recordings on Nguyen’s phone after his arrest, discussing Mr Laidlaw “before and after” his death.
A few minutes after he got into their borrowed Audi Q3, Nguyen shot Mr Laidlaw in the right shoulder about 4.10pm.
Mr Laidlaw fled the car but died a short time later.
Flanked by security guards in the dock, Nguyen began to dab his eyes with a tissue as his barrister, Amelia Beech, expressed Nguyen’s remorse for taking Mr Laidlaw’s life to his family, while Curham appeared visibly nervous.
Ms Beech told the court her client had been in and out of prison for his entire adult life, with the 12 months before the shooting the longest he’d spent out of custody.
She said Nguyen was “institutionalised” and had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic who had been the victim of shocking police brutality in the mid-2000s.
Ms Beech said Justice Christopher Beale should accept their plot was “chaotic” not methodological, arguing the judge could not find Nguyen went there intending to shoot Mr Laidlaw.
She said recordings found on Nguyen’s phone showed the couple were taking drugs that day and their plan was “rambling and meandering”.
“It’s bravado, it’s pretending to be a gangster,” she said of the way her client behaved.
Curham’s barrister, Geoffrey Steward, told the court he wanted to call forensic psychologist Patrick Newton and Curham’s mother, Susie, to give evidence at the plea of what Curham had told them about alleged sexual abuse by Mr Laidlaw.
Justice Beale said the evidence proved Curham had a “grievance” with Mr Laidlaw, but anything further would be based on unproven allegations.
“Based on the material I’m already familiar with, I’m prepared to find she had a grievance with Mr Laidlaw,” he said.
“But I’m not prepared, based on hearsay, to go beyond that … It remains an allegation.”
The hearing continues.